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AN ADDRESS 



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Commencemeiit Day, June 2, 1886, 
—BY— ! E xperimentStat 

JA8. E. PATTERSON, Ph. D., F. 8. A. 



PRESIDENT, :: LEXINGTON, :: KENTUCKY. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF BOARD OF TRDSTEES. 



FBANKFOBT, KY.: 

Capital Office, John D, Woods, Public Printer and Bindek. 

1886. 



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U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



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ADDRESS ON COMMENCEMENT DAY 

By JAS. K, PATTERSON, Ph. D„ F. S. A„ 

PRESIDENT OF THE STATE COLLEGE OF KENTUCKY. 
[rublished by order of the Board of Trustees.] 



Ill the absence of Governor Knott, who was invited to address you, I propose to 
occupy your time for a few minutes with a brief retrospect. It is the custom witli all 
engaged in mercantile pursuits and in manufacturing enterprise, to take an inventory 
of stock at stated periods, and from conclusions, based upon trustworthy data, to 
determine whether their business be prosperous or the reverse; whether they be hold- 
ing their own, advancing or losing ground, and in the light of the information thus 
obtained, to determine the policy of the future. 

This is not, by any means, the first time that the College has taken a retrospect 
of its operations. This is done by the Board of Trustees annually, but on no previous 
occasion have the public been taken into the conifidence of the College authorities as 
I propose to do to-day. 

Twenty-one years have elapsed since the Agricultural and Mechanical College 
was established. These Colleges owe their existence to the act of Congress of 186ti, 
donating lands to the States for this purpose, in proportion to representation. The 
allotment to Kentucky was 330,000 acres — a magnificent endowment if it had 
been judiciously and economically managed. The State committed the mistake of 
attaching the College created under the act to one of the denominational colleges of 
the Commonwealth, instead of putting it at once upon an independent basis. The 
land scrip was sold for fifty cents per acre, the proceeds iuA'ested in Kentucky six per 
cent, bonds, of which the State Treasurer became the custodian, and the income from 
this invested fund was dii-ected to be paid over annitally to the Trustees of the Ken- 
tucky University, the institution to which it was attached, so long as the connection 
existed. The Legislature reserved the right to dissolve the relation at any time. The 
Legislature required that the Kentucky Uliiversity should provide, within a reasona- 
ble time, a farm worth not less than $100,000, for the use of the Agricultural College 
for experimental purposes, and a Mechanical Department for practical instruction in 



4 COMMEIf CEMENT DAY ADDRESS. 

On the morning of the 18th, while in Louisville, I read in the columns of the Courier- 
Journal a manifesto issued by the denominational colleges of Kentucky, six in num- 
ber, assailing the principle of State aid to the State College, and calling upon the peo- 
ple of the Commonwealth to insist on the repeal of the tax levied for its beueiit. Jt is 
not my purpose to discuss this paper. I concluded that I could not do better than to 
remain in Louisville one day longer, and to answer in the next issue of the Courier- 
Journal the appeal of the presidents of Colleges and presidents of boards of trustees 
whose names were appended to the document. The arguments in favor of repeal 
appeared on the 18th. On the 19th the plea for the maintenance of the State College 
likewise appeared. The Senators and Representatives, who were expected to receive 
and digest the appeal of the colleges against aid to the State C(jllege in the brief 
interval between its reception at their homes and their departure for the seat of gov- 
ernment, had only one day less in which to consider the plea of the State College for 
the continuance of State aid. 

On the assembling of the Legislature, it soon became manifest that the State Col- 
lege question would be one of the questions of the session. 

Shortly after the Legislature assembled, a bill was introduced to repeal the tax 
levied for the benefit of the College. Early in January the subject was brought be- 
fore a committee of the House in an elaborate argument by Dr. Beatty, of Centre Col- 
lege, to which argument reply was made by the President of the College a few days 
later. In addition to the question of expediency and justice of State aid to an 
Institution owned and controlled by the Commonwealth, the question of the constitu- 
tionality of the tax was raised and argued befure the committee by an ex-Chief-Justice, 
one of the ablest lawyers at the bar. Eeply was made by counsel. For weeks and 
months the assault and defense went on with unflagging energy. When finally the 
matter came before the House for action, the motion for repeal was laid on the table 
by a handsome majority, and thus the famous legislative contest of 1881-2 ended. 
After the adjournment, however, suit was brought in the Chancellor's Court in 
Louisville to test the constitutionality of the act. Simultaneously a test case was 
made in the Circuit Court of Magoffin county. The decision of the Chancellor's 
Court and of the Magoffin Circuit Court both affirmed the constitutionality of the 
tax. Appeal was taken, and the case argued before the Supreme Court in the 
Spring of 1883. But no decision has yet been reached by the Court of Appeals. 

The cause of the College, the cause of superior education for the industrial 
classes, has thus far triumphed all along the line. Three successive Legislatures have 
refused to disturb the settlement of 1879-80. 

Let us now look at the relative status of the College in 1882 at the conclusion of 
the great legislative contest and to-day. Had the assailants known our financial embar- 
rassment, it would materially have compromised our prospects and weighted us in the 
struggle. On the completion and equipment of our buildings we found ourselves 
$35,000 in debt. Nearly half of this amount was due to the professors of the College, 
whose salaries remained for that year unpaid. |7,000 were borrowed from the North- 
ern Bank on personal security to meet the most pressing obligations and notes exe- 



Commencement dav address. 5 

catecl for the balance. So stood the case at the close of the fiscal year 1881-2. How 
stands the case to-day ? Every cent of the obligations of t' e College, principal and 
interest, has been paid. Thousands of dollars have meanwhile been expended in addi- 
tion for laboratory equipments for microscopes, spectrfiscopes, polariscopes and other 
material. Three well equipped laboratories for general chemistry, organic chemistry 
and agricultural chemistry, and for the experimental station, have been provided. 
Within the last year the Normal School has been strengthened by doubling the ef- 
fective work of the department proper. Within the last year, too, the most import- 
ant step which has ever been taken towards realizing the idea of agricultural training 
and experiment was taken by the Executive Committee, viz, the establishment of an 
experiment station for work exclusively experimental. Under the charge of a com- 
petent director its bulletins have already attracted attention from widely different 
quarters and have taken rank among the be^^t publications of the kind in the country. 
Under the auspices of the director a measure requiring all fertilizers used in the Com- 
monwealth to be analyzed at this station, and by the officers of this College, with safe- 
guards for the protection of the farmer, was passed by the Legislature. Every pack- 
age sold henceforth in Kentue y will bear the imprmmtur of the College and bring 
the fact of its existence and ils work home to every purchaser in the State. More- 
over, the effective work of the Preparatory Department an indispensuble feature of 
the Institution, has been largely mcreased since 1882. 

We have no controversy with the denominational colleges of the land We bid 
them God-speed in their work. There is room for them and for us. We believe that 
the net result of the contest has done them good as well as us. It has stimulated 
them to provide for the necessities of the youth of Kentue y by the effort to in- 
crease their endowments, to lengthen their cords and to strengthen their stakes. Un- 
der a mistaken apprehension of injurious comp'^tition resulting from the free scholar- 
ship, cheap tuition and enlarged facilities provided by the State College, they assailed 
the justice, the expediency and the constitutionality of State aid to a State Institution. 
These fears were groundless. Their patronage instead of diminishing has grown, and 
they, as we, are more prosperous now than they were four years ago. 

Twenty-one years is the limit of minority. The State College has attained its 
majority. It stands erect to-day, having | assed through a struggle for existence the 
severity of which no one knows so well as he who now addresses you. There have 
been periods when for weeks at a time I did not know the satisfaction of a sound 
night's sleep, undisturbed by the difficulties and dangers which beset the State 
College. That period is past. The State College has survived all and is here to stay. 
Its Trustees never despaired. Its Faculty bore privation, and borrowed money to 
supply the want of unpaid salaries. We have survived our perils, paid our debts, en- 
larged our sphere of educational activity. This is the net result of twenty-one years, 
and with pleasure and pride I present you this balance sheet to-day. We are, so far 
as we know, in peace and charity with all. This much we know, we are not volun- 
tarily, and never intend to be, a disturbing element in the educational interests of 
Kentucky. Our mission is to extend the boundaries of human knowledge by instruc- 



6 COMMENCEMENT DAY ADDRESS. 

tion and expeiMment, to aid the youth of the Commonwealth, especially the hardy, the 
industrious, the energetic, whose means will not provide an education elsewhere, with 
an education equal to the best that can be gotten within the limits of Kentucky or out 
of it. The State College has made a good beginning in this direction. It will, while 
not excluding classical instruction, address itself mainly to those branches of learning 
which are most nearly related to industrial enterprise. While not neglecting those 
sciences which relate principally to the cultivation of the mental faculties, it will ad- 
dress itself mainly to the work of instruction and discovery in those departments 
which concern themselves with Nature and natural processes, with the physical sci- 
ences, with the laws of matter, with the laws of organization, animal and vegetable. 
It will, moreover, endeavor to prepare its students, by means of a sound disciplinary 
training in civil history and in moral and political philosophy, for entering upon the 
privileges and responsibilities of citizenship in this mighty nation. 

I can not allow this occasion to pass without saying a few words suggested by the 
circumstances in which we find ourselves to-day. In one form or other, questions con- 
nected directly or indirectly with education meet us on every hand. TJiey meet us in 
the newspaper, on the platform, in the Legislature, and in the halls of Congress. 
They are discussed in the pulpit, in the class-room, by the fireside, and by the wayside. 

The well-being of the present and the security of the futvire depends upon the 
views which we entertain respecting them. There never was a time in the history of 
the world when more depended upon the intellect and the morality of men. The ag- 
gregate of material wealth, with all the potent influences associated therewith, has 
grown within the present century out of all proportion to any increase which ever 
preceded it. The diffusion of knowledge, which is by no means convertible with edu- 
cation, has created hopes and stimulated desires such as never existed before. Ques- 
tions have arisen and problems have presented themselves which were never dreamed 
of centuries ago, except in the cell of the recluse, or the study of the philosopher, 
and then in relations and under conditions which differ widely from the environment 
of to-day. 

The growth of free institutions, the inalienable birthright of the English-speaking 
stock, has changed the whole structure of modern society. More than six centuries 
have elapsed since Magna Charta was extorted from King John, the "ablest and most 
worthless of the Angevin Kings." That piece of barbarous Latin with its rude signa- 
tures of illiterate barons has done more for the divine plant of human liberty than all 
the classics of antiquity. To it England owes her House of Commons, America her 
Declaration of Independence and her Constitution, and the States of modern Europe 
their dearly bought and highly prized systems of parliamentary government. To the 
same parentage belongs the derivative freedom of the Dominion of Canada, and the 
other great dependencies which form the most magnificent colonial empire which the 
world has ever seen, each one in various stages of development, containing the germ 
and the potency of an independent nationality, whose influence will profoundly affect 
the civilization of the future. 

One hundred years ago .the English tongue was spoken by 12,000,000 of people, 



. COMMENCEMENT DAY ADDRESS. 7 

Now it is the languag-u uf 100,000,000, and they the noblest, tlie freest and the 
mightiest peoples in the world. Among other nations and other races, free institu- 
tions may still be said to be on trial with by no means any thing like certainty what 
the issue will be. But among the English-speaking stock on the other side of the 
Atlantic and on this, and in the far-ofl" but thrifty and vigorous and ambitious young- 
States of the South Pacific^ wcill-grounded hopes exist that the roots of a genuine, 
healthy freedom have struck so deep, and the plant has attained, under circumstances 
of great trial, such healthy, vigorous growth, that the question of the capability of 
man for self-government is now, under proper conditions, no longer a problem but a 
ccrtaint5^ I have said " under proper conditions," and I use this language advisedly. 
No people can long be free unless on these conditions — intelligence and morality — 
that is, they must know their rights, and they must, in their action, be guided by 
a sense of duty. There are fanatics, whose zeal outruns their intelligence. There 
are hypocrites, who simulate a sense of duty in order that they may trade upon 
the credulity and patriotism of their fellow men. When these in any consider- 
able numbers are invested with the privileges of the franchise, they endanger the 
existence of the fabric of society and of the nation. When these constitute a ma- 
jority of those who are invested with the privileges of the franchise, they make self 
government impossible. 

Now, I believe the English-speaking stock to be capable of self government. 
Why? They have been addressing themselves to the solution of this problem for 
seven hundred years. During the age of Henry and Frederick Barbarossa, while the 
Emperor of Germany was on his way to Canossa to place his crown in the hands of 
the Konian Pontiff, the barons of England were extorting civil freedom from their 
kings and refusing to allow the intervei tion of the Pope in the religious affairs of the 
kingdom. While Louis XIV was exhausting the treasure and wasting the blood of 
his people and abolishing their parliaments, the English parliamentarians and the 
Scotch Covenanters were bringing one Stuart to the block liecause he encroached upon 
the privileges of Parliament, and sending anothei- into exile because he overrode the 
barriers of the Constitution. 

And later still, when the French republic, having exhausted itself under the 
ruthless tyranny of Robespierre, Danton and Marat, was handing itself in weari- 
ness and despair over to the victor of Marengo, bound hand and foot in chains of its 
own forging, the American people were putting their Constitution into working 
order, and consolidating the great Republic under George Washington and Alexander 
Hamilton. Why this diflerence ? The French republic owed its existence to the 
principles enunciated by Diderot and Rousseau and Helvetius and Thomas Paine ; the 
American Republic to the rights of man, as evolved in Magna Charter, Habeas Corpus 
and the Bill of Rights, and to the duties of man as evolved in that greatest of all 
books, the Bible. 

But the enemy is coming in like a flood. The Socialism of Most and Fischer and 
Spies is akin to the Nihilism which assassinated Alexander of Russia, and to the Com- 
mune which attempted to wrap Paris in conflagration, while the French people were 



8 COMMElSrCEMENT DAY ADDRESS. 

writhing in the agonj of mortal conflict. This is an un-English and an un-American 
doctrine. How shall we counteract it? By educating the head and the heart of 
America. If we cannot assimilate and make good citizens of the Socialist and the 
Communist when he comes to our shores, we must tie his hands that he do no mischief. 
"We must make the lump of such quality and character by building on the basis of 
intelligence and religion and morality, that the mischievous leaven which these ene- 
mies of society and of mankind seek to infuse shall be harmless. To this end the 
school-house and the church must exist in every district and township, from the pine 
forests of Canada to the orange groves of Florida. This magnificent tongue of ours 
the tongue of Shakspeare and Milton, of Burke and of Webster, of Byron and Tenny- 
son, the noblest development of human speech ever spoken on this planet, must be in 
the future as it has been in the past, the vehicle for thoughts, noble and virtuous and 
loyal. It must continue to be the tongue of a people who inherit the spirit as well 
as the traditions of Kunnymede and Banuockburn, of Saratoga and of Waterloo. 

In these schools our youth must be taught to know themselves ; they must be 
taught to know Nature, of which they form a part ; they must be taught to know God, 
the author of Nature and of man. We owe it to ourselves and to posterity, so to edu- 
cate the children of this generation that the lamp of intelligence shall be transmitted 
with a brighter light and a ruddier glow, that the ideas of obligation and of duty may 
be strengthened and enlarged, and that power and wealth may be subordinated to benef- 
icence. No country in the world has made more rapid progress in providing all the 
requisite conditions for a broad, liberal education than these United States have done 
within the last forty years. This is especially true since the close of the late civil 
war. Her great institutions of learning have within that period " gone forwai'd by 
leaps and bounds." Within the limits of this Commonwealth substantial progress has 
been made. But what has been done is only an earnest and an augury, 1 trust, of 
what is to follow. 

Ere long we shall follow the example of the older States, and cultivate science 
and literature, not for their money value only, but for their own sake, to expand 
the faculties, enlarge the range of mental vision, and widen the domain of human 
knowledge. In this auspicious present, I see the promise of a yet more auspicious 
future. May it be ours to aid to roll away the stone in order that intelligence, en- 
nobled by virtue and inspired by duty, may rise to rule the world. 



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